Judging Jerry’s Judges (Part 2 of 2)
Read Part 1 here
Three strikes and you’re out should apply to the Jerry
Brown Supreme Court, and in fact did. In 1986, an angry electorate
defeated three of the Brown judges up for retention election, and
fundamentally changed the Supreme Court. These three strikes are the
legacy of Brown’s court.
Strike One: Destroying of the court’s reputation for excellence and impartiality.
"The court’s national statue has waned under Bird" headlined the California Journal
in 1986 analyzing the reputation of the court in the year of Bird’s
second retention election. The court was very liberal under Brown and
Bird, but that was nothing new. It became a liberal court under former
Chief Justices Phil Gibson (1940-1964) and Roger Traynor (1964-1970).
But the court was then considered a trendsetter; that court was
liberal but not ideological. "There dwelt one giant (Traynor) and many
tall trees on the California Supreme Court of the 1950s and 1960s,"
wrote the director of the Earl Warren Legal Institute in 1986.
Appellate Court Reverses Ruling on Prop 25
The court giveth and the court taketh away.
On Friday, I wrote about a Superior Court decision that removed a phrase from the ballot title of Proposition 25 that said while lowering the two-thirds vote to majority to pass the budget, the measure: "Retains Two-Thirds Vote Requirement for Taxes."
Yesterday, an Appellate Court overruled the lower court and put the phrase back into the title, arguing that the voters would not be confused, as the Superior Court judge asserted, that they must vote YES to retain the two-thirds vote.
The Golden States War on Itself (Part 1 of 2)
Cross-posted on NewGeography.com
California has long been a destination for those seeking a better place to live. For most of its history, the state enacted sensible policies that created one of the wealthiest and most innovative economies in human history. California realized the American dream but better, fostering a huge middle class that, for the most part, owned their homes, sent their kids to public schools, and found meaningful work connected to the state’s amazingly diverse, innovative economy.
Recently, though, the dream has been evaporating. Between 2003 and 2007, California state and local government spending grew 31 percent, even as the state’s population grew just 5 percent. The overall tax burden as a percentage of state income, once middling among the states, has risen to the sixth-highest in the nation, says the Tax Foundation. Since 1990, according to an analysis by California Lutheran University, the state’s share of overall U.S. employment has dropped a remarkable 10 percent.
When the state economy has done well, it has usually been the result of asset inflation-first during the dot-com bubble of the late 1990s, and then during the housing boom, which was responsible for nearly half of all jobs created earlier in this decade.
The Coming Impacts of Social Media on Modern Direct Democracy
The Coming Impacts of Social Media on Modern Direct Democracy
Last week our company, ActivateDirect.com, was proud to sponsor the "Technology Symposium on the Rise of Digital Direct Democracy" at the 2010 Global Forum on Modern Direct Democracy held at U.C. Hastings in San Francisco. As part of the Tech Symposium, I served on a really exciting panel of political technology experts from around the world discussing the impacts of the Internet, and particularly social media, on direct democracy.
The key question posed to the panel was: "What impact will social media have on direct democracy in the next three years and beyond?"